News Department Does Double Duty and produces twice the number of weekday programming without charging KPFA for overtime. New Up Front program raises $17,000 in one day alone. Special thanks to Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Aileen Alfandary, John Hamilton, Laura Prives, and others.

The KPFA Local Station Board today passed a resolution thanking and congratulating the General Manager, staff, and volunteers for the fund drive that just ended that raised $47,000 over the goal -- and still counting as online donations keep coming in. In particular, we thanked the news department and staff who are doing double-duty and producing twice the number of weekday hours of programming without being paid anything extra.

“We have spent, and budgeted, as if a one-time spike in listenership and listener support was long term growth, which it was not.”

“We have a lot more people on payroll; and it hurts to cut jobs … it hurts us as social-justice people. …

“And you get pushed back, you get politicking, you get coalitions to block any kind of job cut, so the path of least resistance is to first spend down your savings, as long as you got money to pay the bills, and then go, ‘Oh my god, we’re headed over a cliff now,’ which is where we are now.”

KFPA has a $3 million annual budget. $17,000 will not pay for part-time worker Tiekert's pension and we listener-subscribers to KPFA should not have to pay any pensions to any part-time workers. All of the above-named people are proud supporters of the now defunct recall of Tracy Rosenberg, an outstanding member of the Local Station Board and Pacifica National Board as the cutoff date for eligible voters was wrong so the court stopped the whole contrived lie. We do not promote individual programs at KPFA on the basis of how much money they raise; that is called privatization. We promote KPFA as one unit. When our general manager gets the totals of money actually paid to KPFA, not just promised, he will announce the figure in his newsletter and to the Pacifica Financial Committee, among others. Should there be insufficient funds to meet payroll, there must be layoffs, as anywhere. Tiekert and Hamilton are in line to look for a new job elsewhere as they have low seniority. Their union contract, like all other union contracts, mandates last hired, first fired. Meanwhile the Local Station Board elections are coming and we will all remember the names of those who supported the recall so we never vote for them or anyone endorsed by them. Keep your slick mailer from the SaveKPFA gang and from Stop the Recall. Never forgive, never forget is how I am voting.

As usual, Ms. Futran's grasp of numbers is not the best. As a board member, she should know that once you subtract the pledges from Los Angeles and Fresno (which KPFA doesn't keep) and knock off the 10% of the pledges that don't get fulfilled, you end up with about $250,000 or exactly five weeks of expenses at the current churn rate. From a mini-drive which lasted for 11 days.

That is why KPFA will begin fundraising yet again in six weeks, before the end of September.

Crowing is nice, but KPFA will still be broke again in less than 2 months because it spends every penny as fast as it comes in with an unrealistic cost structure.

Maybe if the board bragged less and read the budget before they passed it, some of these longstanding problems could get solved.

"Alistair McDuffy" Too bad you don't understand how fund drive goals are set. All that you mention is, of course, taken into consideration -- along with the cost of premiums, btw -- when a goal is set. If a goal is exceeded by $50K that is more money, not less.Your tone and misinformation is so familiar. Maybe others will "recall" it as well.

Brian Edwards-Tiekert, a reporter at KPFA, the board treasurer and power on the Concerned Listeners faction, says there is a failure of transparency at KPFA. I don’t agree. What he is doing is adequately transparent.

Edwards-Tiekert is still going strong with his line that money seemed about to be taken from the KPFA bank account by Pacifica, that the business manager—brand spanking new in that position, by the way—got just such an impression from our bank, and those in charge at Pacifica didn’t respond to his two e-mails asking for information immediately. What’s a treasurer to do? Tell the board? Nah, tell the world that KPFA is being robbed.

What Edwards-Tiekert doesn’t bother to say is that there might be valid reasons why he didn’t get a prompt response to his e-mails. That the two people involved were out of town and he has spent years playing nasty political games with them might be grounds for their not hopping right to it. His not getting a speedy reply, he says, validates his irresponsibly running to the media with a story that would stop any rational person from giving money to KPFA.

While the presses were rolling printing Edward-Tiekert’s larders being raided story, several board members were meeting with Edwards-Tiekert and the new business manager to review the budget. Not so much as a whisper to us that Pacifica was emptying our coffers. Of course not; we all knew that is not the case. The public didn’t. So there it was the next morning as front page news.

Since then there have been many commentaries back and forth in these pages. The end result is that confusion reigns, as I’ve since learned when talking to some longtime progressives and KPFA donors. Since these same people are about to elect a new KPFA board, such confusion is dangerous to the station.

Here is what is really happening. Pacifica is not taking any money from KPFA. The station does, however, have budget woes. The economy has turned sour and donations are down. We’ve been running a $300,000 budget deficit known since the beginning of our fiscal year that ends this month. The powers that hold sway over the station and board, Concerned Listeners, have been running things for the last three years. Pacifica had ordered them to make budget cuts and they didn’t.

Pacifica is doing better financially. WBAI, our sister station in New York that has been negatively affecting the network’s finances, has had fund drives this year that did far better than the year before. The national office, board and WBAI are in new hands as of 2009 and those who were in power for the prior three years, Concerned Listeners and their allies, are history on the national level. Reports are that staff morale at WBAI is on the upswing.

You’re probably wondering what might have triggered the urge to send misinformation loose in the progressive world. Edwards-Tiekert also doesn’t bother mentioning that enough staff members no longer want him as one of their representatives on the board that there is a recall election in the works to remove him from that position. The KPFA board has several seats that are elected by the staff from their ranks. The staff’s desire to get rid of him predates the story he keeps putting out in the media that is damaging to KPFA, so a white knight galloping to the rescue image might be useful.

Here’s another educated guess. Not only is Edwards-Tierkert subject to a recall election, it is board election season and member ballots will arrive any day. (I am a member of KPFA’s board, and in the interest of full disclosure, running for reelection.) His group, Concerned Listeners, have been the majority faction on the board for three years. They have little to entice in terms of candidates this year. Their slate offers up 70 percent white males over the age of 60. They have already provided the board with two aging brothers as well as a husband, wife, and one of their former employees. Look closely and you realize that their slate is loaded with retired bureaucrats. It’s an outdated notion and one that reeks of the typical corporate board of directors.

They are up against a dynamic young team, Independents for Community Radio. We’ve got 20- and 30-year-olds, and 70 percent are female and people of color. There are a couple of older media and KPFA hands thrown in for experience and continuity.

This is all likely election fun and games on the part of Edwards-Tiekert and Concerned Listerners, but it comes at a critical juncture for KPFA. Not only are we running a budget deficit and losing both donors and listeners, we need to move into the modern online world and do a better job of providing radio that appeals to a younger audience as well as the diverse community in which we all live. We need to draw on the voices and expertise so readily available in our marvelous Bay Area in a more inclusive sweep and not limit ourselves to a small and aging world of political and radio cronyism.

There is also a fair degree of general unrest and dissatisfaction with KPFA management since the Unpaid Staff Organization was ‘derecognized’ two year’s ago and one of their members hurt while arrested at the station a year ago for no good reason. Roughly 70 percent of all the programs KPFA airs are produced and hosted by UPSO members. They need to be fearless in pursuing new program ideas, not nervously looking over their shoulders. They need to be treated with respect. Speaking plainly, we need a new board majority that will allow what has been forbidden for three years: Serious and respectful discussion of the problems we face and space for exploring creative new solutions. Whether a board or staff member is a power force shouldn’t matter if they have ideas to offer. The audience is shrinking and we’re running out of time.

KPFA has a mission to provide news, views, voices and expertise not available elsewhere in the media and reflective of our whole community. We could do so much better at it and we may not get another chance.

Sasha Futran is a radio and print journalist, winner of Project Censored most censored story of the year award, former minority member of the KQED board who stopped the Robert Mondavi infomercial from being produced.

"One of the demands of the SavePacifica movement was the reinstatement of KPFA's fired General Manager, Nicole Sawaya, and the staff who'd been fired for speaking out about her unjust termination. Larry Bensky got his job back, Robbie Osman got his show back, but Nicole never got invited back to KPFA. And apparently, Futran was angling for her job behind the scenes. "Ever since I moved to Berkeley, I have had a secret desire to be KPFA's General Manager," she wrote in a cover letter faxed over with a resume on August 10, 1999. "I look forward to exploring the possibilities with you, Lynn and others. If nothing else perhaps I can offer some helpful ideas or insight into the concerns of the many different players in the current crisis." Sounds like she's offering to share intel with Lynn Chadwick, who had, the previous month, locked out KPFA's staff, arresting 51 of them in the process, boarded up KPFA's building, seized control of KPFA's signal, and replaced it with piped-in music."

Very simply I believed the lies and half-truths told to me by some on the faction I once belonged -- Independents for Community Radio aka ICR -- to and became an independent on the KPFA LSB. I had the opportunity to work on committee with a number of people from Save KPFA and did eventually join ranks with them.

I left ICR because it ,and its prior manifestations, played too many behind the scenes games and had little experience or knowledge of radio and programming but a lot of desire to institute changes that would bring the station down. I always said that if we got our hands on the programming I would be leaving their company.

For the record once again, I never angled for Nicole Sawaya's job as state -- something already much discussed on this site year's ago and already documented to be untrue. What is true is that I was asked to apply after she was fired and after the staff went back to work. I did not think for a moment that I would be hired, but those in the Coalition for a Democratic Pacifica, which I was a part of founding, thought that I should and so I did apply.

The fact remains that I probably did write the letter "Report" (busy day, Tracy?) posted, although, my records are not as complete as that agency. It was during an election season and I was a good soldier.

Much more important, however, is that I seen the work that Brian Edwards-Tiekert does on the air and the work he does at the station. I know, for example, that in this last fund drive it was his idea to offer as a premium a flash/jump drive with 100 speeches and that was extremely popular with listeners and donors. I know, for example, that he has another wonderful idea for the next fund drive as well.

Some people stand in the way of the station's future and others don't. Some people try to run the show from behind the scenes single-handedly and others use the system of democracy we have in place and work cooperatively. I'm quite clear now about which side does what.

The staff did a fantastic job. Morale is high among those who wish it well. That is extremely important in the creative atmosphere and bodes well for KPFA. Those of us wishing it well will continue to do what we can to keep us moving forward. We will call $50K more than aimed for as $50K more money and not less. We will focus on supporting the staff that accomplished that goal. We will do what we can to fight off the detractors who would try so hard to plant a seed of distrust and dissension as a way to further derail the situation and station.

I just wish some of my former ICR comrades would stop and think about what is really going on, as I did. There are a number of smart people on that faction who should not be blindly believing everything they are told and should further educate themselves on how things should be run and are really run. It's an eye opener!

San Francisco voters are reminded of Tiekert's law firm in every election as Ms. Harmeet Dhillon, chair of the SF Republican Party and partner in Tiekert's law firm, runs for office in every election, including this year. Mitch Jeserich and Lewis Sawyer were also represented by the same law firm, Dhillon & Smith, as plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Pacifica over a staff election of some 200 people, which if there were a problem, could easily be redone due to the small number of people involved.

To get rid of this whole government operation known as SaveKPFA, we have to work on the upcoming election. First, you must be a subscriber, which means paying at least $25 before September 1. You can do so online at: https://secure.kpfa.org/support/

Next, we need a postcard of candidates opposed to SaveKPFA, usually known as http://www.voteindyradio.org/ We can be sure the SaveKPFA millionaire Hallinan gang will certainly send us a slick mailer, so an opposing postcard is mandatory, listing opposing candidates and the website.

Most importantly, everyone needs to vote so all 14 open positions are filled with Voteindyradio candidates. For the listing of the current Local Station Board members and their term ending dates, see http://lsb.kpfa.org/members

And when you vote, please remember who the leading light is for Tiekert, Futran and the rest of SaveKPFA is, namely Larry Bensky, a former KPFA programmer and former editor of the CIA's Paris Review. For more on this government operative, see: 1. His attacks to callers on air: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/09/25/18659813.php

During the last board election Sasha Futran got angry at another member of the ICR slate and threatened to leave ICR and join SaveKPFA. The ICR somehow managed to resolve the matter. The ICR, who narrowly won that election, then chose Sasha as chair. It appears that when Sasha wanted something, she would threaten to go over to the other side unless she got her way. It would be interesting to hear what her final and unfulfilled request may have been.

You did that to yourself Sasha, and it appears that this is not the first time. As for proof, there must be people out there who know your full story, from this incident, and also from various other times.

Sasha was a member of the original Save KPFA group in 1992 where I first met her. At that time I was more leftist but it was of an anarchist variety, not the Nanny State Demo Party statism.
Sasha was very much in the old New Deal mold except she was more critical of Israel and at that time was on the insufferable KQED millionaires board where she was a welcome voice of dissent and very much a fish out of water.
We often talked about the old left hacks at KPFA, Maldari, Welch, Mericle, Bensky, Mandel, the insufferable Sokol, etc., ad nauseum. Some of these folks are still around and doing their usual lousy job of mismanaging KPFA. They were Clintonoids then and Obamacans now.
Sasha's opportunism in switching sides on the recent controversies is exactly keeping in character for her. Although she's quite articulate and personally attractive she is an anti-philosophical political pragmatist of the kind that runs all of the Establishment.
If only such a very small minority of KPFA members even bother to vote and then elect two thirds of the hack candidates the writing's on the wall.
Pacifica will sell it because it will fetch a handsome price on the market. My late father was a broadcast broker and I know the economics here.
Also maybe a GOP victory would have reenergized the troops but with Obama they will go right back to sleep and even cheer on the government's disarming of the people on the way to a police state. But you will never know it if you rely on the Democratic Party 'news' presented on KPFA.